The
Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology has been awarded the
prestigious DifferenceMaker award by
the Alliance for Student Activities for being the top community service high
school in the United States.

In
a service project spearheaded by the Magnet students themselves, both students
and faculty competed in a food drive project that enabled the Rockdale Food
Bank to remain open in a time of dire need.

The
Food Bank was facing temporary closure right before the Thanksgiving holidays
due to the massive demand. Students learned of the food bank’s predicament
during the initial food drop-offs. The original goal was to donate around 500
cans of food. Upon learning of the food bank’s situation, the students rallied
and donated around 1,600 cans of non-perishable food by the end of the
month-long drive.

"I
think it was the first time that Magnet as a community came together across all
grade levels and families to do a meaningful, community, backyard service
project," said Susan Gary, a science teacher at the Magnet School.

The
project involved an innovative twist on the common "penny war"
fund-raising competition, where pennies earn teams points, but higher
denomination coins deduct points. Thus, the teams compete by putting more of
the "negatively-scoring" coins into their rivals' collection. For the
food drive, certain foods were designated with positive points and some with
negative points. The negatively-pointed goods were the foods that the Rockdale
Food Bank needed more. Grade-levels and faculty competed against each other to
donate food to the Food Bank.

"This
is really something that the kids came up with in the class," said Mary
Ann Suddeth, director of the Magnet School for Science and Technology. "We
started a community service class last year because we feel that this is
something that’s very important and giving back is something that we preach to
our students."

In April, the students who organized the food drive
applied for the DifferenceMaker
award, completing a rigorous application process. Months later, students and
faculty were astonished to learn that they had won. The biggest surprise came
from learning that the Magnet School topped other schools with larger projects,
such as raising $30,000.